


through the wind

by sapphea



Series: they walk with my heart [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: (the fact that that isn't a recognized tag is the whole reason this exists lmao), Alternate Universe - Canon, Character Study, F/M, Family Dynamics, Good Mom Winona, Grief/Mourning, Minor Character Death, PTSD, i did so much fucking math for this but i love winona so it's Fine i'm FINE
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:53:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27822565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphea/pseuds/sapphea
Summary: Something people seem to forget, whether willfully or through collective faulty memory, is that Winona has never been a Kirk.
Relationships: George Kirk/Winona Kirk (past)
Series: they walk with my heart [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2036029
Comments: 2
Kudos: 14





	1. Chapter 1

Something people seem to forget, whether on purpose or through collective faulty memory, is that Winona has never been a Kirk.

It’s an easy mistake to make, especially in the wake of the _Kelvin_ —the name “Kirk” seems plastered on every screen, building, and tongue she comes across. It’s always full of noble regret, of the near-jealous grief that great sacrifice always seems to foster in people who had no stake in it. _Mrs. Kirk, I’m so sorry about your husband. We’ll do anything we can to assist you, Mrs. Kirk. Oh, that poor Winnie Kirk, she holds her head so high despite it all. Don’t bother the poor woman, that’s Mrs. Kirk, don’t you know_ — 

It’s enough to make Winona want to scream, to shake everyone by the shoulders and yell _Kirk was my husband’s name, not mine! You don’t know me!_

Winona has never been a Kirk. She doesn’t have the casual honesty, the soft eyes, the straightforward morality that constitute a Kirk. She loves—loved— _loves_ her husband, but she’s never been one of them. 

But people don’t want to see Winona Davis, a woman who’s itching for the stars just two months after her husband’s death out in the black. They don’t want to see that, despite missing him every day, she is not rendered helpless by grief. That she is a person outside of her husband and children. They want to see a woman with tears in her eyes, gripping tightly to her sons because they’re all she has left of her perfect husband. They want to see what they expect a grieving widow to look like. In this town that birthed and raised her husband, they want Winona _Kirk_ , and the best way to be left alone is to give her to them.

Winona will never give anyone the satisfaction of seeing her cry, fake tears or no, but otherwise she falls into her public role. The mask is tight, but with time it gets easier to wear.

“Mrs. Kirk, it must be so hard getting on by yourself.”

Winona smiles sadly. Everything she does now has to be tinged with sadness. “Well yes, but I’m getting by. Everyone’s been so gracious and kind to me and my boys.” Thankfulness, too, is a constant requirement.

The old lady smiles with teeth. “Well, of _course_ , sweetheart! We look out for our own. Anything you need, just give us a holler, we’re more’n happy to help.” She nods once, satisfied with Winona’s answers and her own performance, and continues her shopping.

Sometimes it takes more than that to get people off of her case. Sometimes people go after her children.

It’s always approached like it’s sympathy, as her neighbor does now—Kim “call-me-Kimmy-hon” Hartford coos over the bundle in Winona’s arms and reaches behind her legs to pinch Sam’s cheeks. “Oh, aren’t they both just absolute _darlings!_ ” she simpers. “Y’all head on in, the kids are already out in the yard—oh no, Winnie, let me get that for you.” Kim wrests the covered pie tin from Winona and chatters happily the whole way to the kitchen. Winona envies Sam, who took off like a shot at the first indication that he was free to play.

“I mean it, Winnie, you sure know how to raise ‘em pretty,” says Kim as she sets the pie down amidst the rest of the desserts. “That Sammy of yours looks the spitting image of his daddy already.” Her eyes widen comically and she presses a hand to her mouth, not that is stops her talking. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s alright, Kim,” Winona reassures, sad smile in place. “It’s been almost a year, and it’s not like I haven’t heard George’s name thrown every which way.”

Kim just shakes her head, looking like she’s about to cry. “It’s a darn shame,” she whispers. “Their growing up without a father. You know, once they get older, I’m sure Joe’ll be more’n happy to teach ‘em... you know, how to be a man. Of course, I’m not saying you’re not doing the best you can—sweetheart, I don’t think I could do half as well as you if I were in your shoes—but boys’ve gotta have strong men in their lives, haven’t they? My Joe would love to be there for them—you know, he told me the other night, _Kimmy, I worry about those Kirk boys, doesn’t seem right, them not having a good man to be a role model—_ ”

“That’s very kind of you, Kim,” Winona cuts off. “I’ll be sure to tell Sam about it. Lord knows I can’t teach him how to throw a football.” As if Sam had ever expressed interest in sports. As if playing a sport equated to manliness. 

The two women laugh, and luckily the doorbell rings, forcing Kim to play hostess to the newcomers and leave Winona by the dessert table with the insistence to “call me Kimmy, hon, we ain’t strangers”. She sighs in quiet relief. 

“I thought she’d never leave,” she whispers to Jim in her arms. He babbles happily in response. “Yeah, I _know_ , right? People seem to love giving you stepdaddys.” Jim looks at her with the big-eyed honesty of children and yanks her hair. “ _Ow_ , you sonofabitch—I _try_ to have a decent conversation with you and _this_ is the thanks I get? Ungrateful little...”

_Rather than exceeding the speed of light within a_ _local reference frame_ _, a spacecraft with an Alcubierre drive would traverse distances by contracting space in front of it and expanding space behind it, resulting in effective faster-than-light travel. Objects could not accelerate to the speed of light within normal spacetime; instead, the Alcubierre drive—_

“ _Mom_ , Jim’s cryin’ again and I don’t know why!”

With a quiet sigh, Winona shuts off her padd and goes into the living room to investigate. Sure enough, Jim’s wailing on the floor while Sam looks on in alarm.

“He’s not hurt! I didn’t do anything this time, I swear!”  
“ _This_ _time_?” She raises a stern eyebrow though her lips twitch in amusement.

“Well—”

The shrieks reach an ear-splitting crescendo and Winona rushes over to sweep the child into her arms. “Okay Jimmy, you drama queen, I’m here,” she says. “What’s wrong, honey?”

Jim quiets slightly but the crocodile tears keep rolling. “You want food?” she asks him. “You hungry, Jim?”

“I tried that,” Sam says anxiously. “He threw the bottle away.”

And yep, now she sees the puddle of formula slowly seeping into the rug next to a cracked bottle. “Awesome, I’ll get that in just one minute,” she says lightly, though a headache is beginning to form and she _really_ does not feel like scrubbing at a smelly milk stain. “Now Jim, if you’re not hungry and you’re not hurt, I’m gonna need you to shut up. Mommy _really_ needs to read this article for her class, and screaming does _not_ help her concentrate.”

Sam takes a step towards her. “I think he just missed you,” he says quietly.

As she spoke, Jim had begun to calm down, tucking his tiny head against her chest. “I think you’re right,” she tells Sam, ruffling his hair. He leans into it a little, and Winona thinks Jim’s not the only one a little starved for attention. “Okay Jimmy, if you’re gonna be a little attention hog, how do you feel about a little astro-history?”

Since Jim can’t really argue, she settles herself on the couch decisively. “Sam, could you get my padd, please?”

Sam dashes into her office and back again, clearly as eager for the crying to stop as she is. “Whatcha readin’?” he asks, hovering after he hands her the padd. “Is it about aliens?”

Winona smiles and shakes her head. “It’s about the history of the warp drive. You’re welcome to listen, too, kiddo.”

Sam makes a face—if it’s not creeping, crawling, or otherwise gross, he has no interest in it—but he still crawls under her arm and settles against her side.

“What about the bottle?” he asks as she’s about to begin reading.

Winona looks over at the mess, then back at Sam, and shrugs. “It’s not going anywhere. Don’t worry about it, Sam, I’ll get it once he’s down.” She waves the padd a little and winks. “This article’s enough to put anyone to sleep, trust me.” 

She’s right. After less than twenty minutes of reading aloud, both of her kids are out cold, curled against each other on the couch. Winona, on her knees scrubbing at the milk stain, looks over at them every once in a while. With the afternoon sun streaming in and lighting up the dust particles in the air, bathing her sleeping boys in warm yellows, they look ethereal, out-of-this-world.

 _My starboys_ , she thinks, and continues scrubbing.

Winona has never been a Kirk, but her boys are, through and through. Sam may look the spitting image of middle-school Frank, but he’s got George’s eyes and heart. He has his father’s moral compass, his softness, his awe of life in every form. He has George’s inability to tell a lie, even to a fault, but also his thoughtful intelligence. And Jim—

Well, Jim looks like George reincarnate. 

But Jim has more of Winona in him than Sam does, which worries her—he’s got her slippery smile and tendency to play his cards close to his chest, her innate distrust of people. Jim’s a born liar, just like his mom. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say he decided to look like his father to mislead people, to gain their trust with a single glance. He’s sharp as a whip and knows his words are weapons. 

Everyone always exclaims that Jim has his father’s eyes, but Winona has seen them often enough in the mirror to know better.

But even though Jim has more Winona in him that she’d like to admit, he’s still a Kirk to his core. If he has anything of George (aside from his looks) it’s his unwavering sense of right and wrong, which gives Winona at least some relief. He’s single-minded in his beliefs and no circumstance can keep him from his goal. 

Sam’s a bit more mellow, but the same. He picked up George’s love of biology and can spend days looking at a single leaf, figuring out how every aspect of it works on its own and with every other to create life. He’s sensitive, too—not in that he’s weak, but in that he likes leaning on people and being someone people lean on. He’s good with emotions, like George was, like Winona isn’t.

She’ll watch them play together sometimes, a study in play-pretend. Her imagination is nothing to scoff at, she knows, but she often feels out of her depth with her boys, and more often than not they find ample entertainment in each other. So she watches them often. She wonders if the games they play—knights and dragons, alien explorations, superheroes—are the ones George played as a child. Bold, noble stories enacted through scraped knees and dirt-smudged, toothless-grinning faces. Winona always preferred playing spies.

Winona has never been a Kirk, but sometimes she wonders if she should try to be, for her sons.


	2. Chapter 2

She knows her sons know she’s itching to get her feet off the ground. She tries to stay down-to-earth. She goes for rides on her motorbike and throws herself into motherhood, makes friends with the couple that owns the local diner and does laundry and helps with homework and kisses boo-boos. She tries to stay content with dragging her kids up to the roof for stargazing. And at first, it seems to work. There’s really nothing like having the two most precious people in the universe sitting on either side of her, just as enthralled by the vastness above them as she is. Grounded and reaching for the stars, all at the same time. Yeah, she gets what those parenting books talk about when they say _the magic of parenthood_ in those moments. 

Sam can name every summer and fall constellation and the stars that form them, and Jim’s not too far behind. Her heart swells every time they show off to her. 

But the problem is that those are just moments, and between them, Winona feels adrift. 

It’s just that everything feels the _same_. Winona tries not to be snooty about the quiet rural town that took her and her boys in after everyone else shut them out, but she’s just not built for farm life. Everyone knows everything about everyone else, and people are mean behind backs rather than to faces, and sometimes Winona thinks she’s in a _Groundhog Day_ -style hellscape because people stick to their routines like glue. It was never the plan to stay here, not this long.

To be fair, it was never the plan to have a kid before graduating from the Academy, either. But winging it felt so much easier when she had someone next to her, falling just as fast. 

And honestly, it’s not just Riverside. It’s Earth. Technically she’d only spent a year in the black before Jim came around, but it was home to her in the way her native planet never was, never could be. There’s just _so much_ out there beyond their tiny little atmosphere. Who could be content to just let it all happen above them?

Winona can’t. But she has to be. She’s got two anchors keeping her down, and they’re the heaviest, most important things in the universe. 

She tells herself the stars will wait for her. She hopes it isn’t a lie. 

As much as she might hate the quiet sleepiness of Riverside, however, she knows she’s there for a reason. 

“Mrs. Kirk, how have you been coping with the loss of your husband these past two years?”

“Mrs. Kirk, do you have any comments on the current Starfleet treatment of the _Kelvin_ incident as just a fluke? Should they be taking the tragedy more seriously?”

“Got a new man in your life, Mrs. Kirk? Or are you still mourning your late husband?”

That last one ignited a fury in her stomach that she only barely reined in, but she tightens her paparazzi mask; furrows her brows just that much more, tinges her small smile with just that much more grief. “It’s been tough these last few years,” she says like she’s admitting a fault, “but the people of Riverside have been nothing but kind and helpful, especially to an outsider like me.” _Fuck you, fuck your mother, fuck every single nosy asshole that’s pretending they’re not listening to this interrogation._ _And fuck you especially, George, for leaving me to deal with this shit_. She blinks quickly, as if she’s tearing up and trying to hide it. It earns her a coo from the peanut gallery. “And no, I’m not looking for a partner right now. Honestly, between Sam and Jim, I have more than enough boys in my life.”

Now that she’s sufficiently played the part, the locals decide it’s a crime that she should be cornered in a grocery store like this—can’t these rude city reporters see the poor woman is just trying to buy food in peace? The audacity. And with her son right there, honestly! Y’all should be ashamed! Winnie, dear, we’re so sorry about that, you don’t owe them anything. Just ring if you need anything, hear? And before she can calculate pi out to the fiftieth digit, the paparazzi have been rudely shown the door.

She sniffs, once. It’s dry, for anyone listening closely, but no one is, and that earns her soothing pats on the shoulder and an escort to the front of the checkout line. “Y’all’re too kind,” she says quietly, and that gets a bunch of denials and an extra carton of milk in her cart. Oh, and a box of cookies, too, how generous. 

After another three rounds of gentle thanks and insistences that it was nothing, sweetie, she’s out by her bike, lading her bags into the sidecar and strapping Sam in beside them. He looks up at her with wide eyes—he’d watched the entire incident in silence, those big brown eyes shining with childish incomprehension. “Ma?” he asks after a moment.

“Yeah, baby?”

“You okay?”

She blinks, surprised. “Yeah, of course, baby. Takes a lot more than that to shake up your mom.”

His eyebrows furrow. “But... you weren’t gonna cry?”

“‘Course not,” she says, shifting the groceries around. “Moms don’t cry.”

“But then, why—?” 

Winona sighs. “Look, Sam, I’ll let you in on a little secret.” His eyes widen again, so she leans in close, whispering conspiratorially. “Sometimes, it’s easier to let people see what they want to see.”

Sam’s confused again. “Why do people wanna see you cry?”

“Well,” she sighs again. “You know I miss your dad, right?” He nods. “Some other people need to see me act... a certain way to know that, too.” Then she winks, and shakes the box of chocolate chip cookies at him. “Plus, sometimes it gets you free cookies.”

Sam makes grabby hands at the box—thank the stars for the always-reliable distraction of sugar—and she relents. She even lets him shove two into his mouth when he thinks she’s not looking. He was a trooper today, he deserves it. 

She swings her leg over the bike, starts it up, then reaches over and shoves a cookie into her own mouth before flipping down her helmet visor. She deserves it, too. 

Winona’s not a terrible mom. She makes sure her kids eat their vegetables, keeps them up-to-date on their vaccinations, and only uses the milder swears around them. She rarely drinks and yells even less. She helps them with their homework and buys them new clothes and really, deeply, truly loves her sons.

Some days she feels like that isn’t enough.

Her thesis has started to bear down on her in earnest, and while any good parent wouldn’t let that affect their relationship with their children, she can feel herself slip into the data, digging a hole and burying herself in it. The numbers are straightforward and Winona _knows_ she knows what she’s doing. Under the stress of dilithium compound formulas and trying to factor in the effects of gravitational waves on her research (which is fucking impossible, by the way, no one knows dick about how gravitational waves affect _anything_ ), there’s no room for second-guessing and self-doubt. The formulas balance, constants stay constant. Numbers are just so _easy_.

“Hey Mom, what’s for dinner?”

Winona startles and drops her stylus, head snapping up to Sam standing in the doorway. At least, she thinks it’s Sam—his face is shadowed and her eyes are too used to looking at small, close writing to focus on something so dark and far away.

Wait, since when did it get dark? She glances back down at her padd, and to her dismay the top right corner reads 21:47. _Oh my god, shit, she forgot about dinner, she’s the worst mom in the quadrant, fuck._

From the doorway, she can hear Sam’s stomach growl. _Fuck fuck shit fuck._

Okay, okay, she can fix this. “We’re going out for dinner!” she declares with a confident grin. “It’s been a while since we’ve been to Pat’s. Get your shoes and a jacket, and yell for Jim.”

Sam doesn’t move. “I still have homework.”

“So bring it along, I’ll help you out.” His stomach rumbles again. “C’mon, the sooner you boys are ready, the sooner we can go.” 

“Jim, we’re going to Pat’s!” Sam hollers, finally turning away from the office. “Get your shoes on!”

“And a jacket, it’s November!” Winona adds, and listens as Jim thunders down the stairs in the way that only four-year-olds can. She rubs her dry eyes, relishing in the feeling of keeping them closed a moment. Then she gets up with a groan, throws a sweater on, slips her feet into boots. 

Herding her kids into the pickup isn’t difficult, except for trying to keep Jim from strangling himself with his own sleeve, and the drive is quick and dark enough that she doesn’t have time to sit in her own guilt. Lana, playing hostess tonight, shepherds them to the bar seats immediately, because she knows how cool it makes Sam feel to sit on the high chairs. As she’s handing out menus and crayons, she shoots Winona a look of concern, but Winona waves her off with a smile. It’s fine. She’s fixing it. 

“No, Sam, you can’t have chicken tenders for the third night in a row,” she says, hauling Jim up into her lap. “How about the chicken alfredo?”

Sam huffs, but agrees. “Play me in boxes?”

“Only if you’re ready to lose, kiddo.”

Winona’s heart burns with pride when she realizes that she’s not having to work very hard to purposely lose to him. Sam’s only seven, but damn if he’s not sharp. He crows in victory as he writes an _S_ inside the final box, and she celebrates with him. They’re fine.

Pat herself, a dark-skinned woman with blue-streaked braids, comes out to deliver their food, and Sam immediately launches into a kid rant about what he’s learning at school through mouthfuls of pasta. Pat, the saint, nods in all the right places and asks just the right questions. Winona takes the time to feed Jim, and that’s when the dread starts building up again. 

Jim, like Winona, has ADHD, and the meds he’s on suppress appetite. Normally Winona would be thrilled to see how Jim’s scarfing down his grilled cheese, but all she can think is _I practically starved my own sons because I got too caught up in my work_. Fuck, she’s a terrible mom. 

To her mortification, she feels herself well up, and she barely gets out a, “Pat, can you watch—” before she’s setting Jim down on her chair and fleeing to the bathroom. 

Winona has a strict no-crying-in-front-of-her-boys policy. Not out of some fucked-up ideal of masculinity, but because she needs to be strong for them. They need to know their mom’s unshakeable, that they can come to her with anything. That she can handle it.

It’s hard to keep it up, though, when she realizes she can’t handle much of anything. 

“ _Pull your shit together_ ,” she hisses at her blurred reflection, hands gripping the edge of the sink. If it ends on a sob, it’s too quiet for anyone to hear. She rattles out a few breaths, blinking quickly, and her sight finally clears up. She notices with a note of satisfaction that not a single tear fell. 

She gives herself another minute—she’d trust Pat with her kids’ lives any day—and only emerges once her eyes don’t look so red as to rouse suspicion. 

“Ma!” Jim cries as he sees her, tiny arms thrown wide. “I beat Miss Pat at tic-tac-toe!”

“Three times in a row,” Pat adds, ruffling his hair. “You’ve got a little genius on your hands, Winnie.” 

Winona goes to Sam, resting her chin on his head. She’s barely tall enough to do it. “No, I’ve got two. And both are pretty sore winners.”

“Hey!” her boys protest at the same time, sending her identical glares of outrage. She and Pat share a look and dissolve into laughter. 

“Alright, alright,” Pat says, reaching into her apron and pulling out a handful of arcade tokens. “Why don’t you go play skee ball and let the boring old grown-ups talk?”

Sam looks at Winona carefully, and she pretends to think about it for a moment before nodding her permission. His face splits into a grin and he’s dragging a bouncing Jim over to the arcade section of the restaurant.

Pat watches them go with a smile. “They’re good kids, Winnie, You’re doing good.”

“Except for the fact that I forgot to feed them until 10 o’clock at night,” she says, rubbing her temples. “I’m pretty sure that counts as child abuse.”

“It does _not_ , Winona, and you know that,” Lana says, joining her wife on the other side of the counter. She puffs her afro up on top of her head absentmindedly. “You’re just overwhelmed. If you’d just let us—” 

“What, watch after two energetic kids during the busiest hours of your day?” Winona waves a dismissive hand. “I can’t ask that of y’all.” 

The two women look at her sadly, but Pat just pushes her neglected plate of food towards her. “Eat,” she says. Winona complies. 

“You could get a babysitter, give you some time to yourself,” Lana suggests. 

Winona shakes her head. “Can’t afford a babysitter on top of daycare, not ‘til I’m done with my thesis.”

“And you’re sure George’s parents—” 

Winona snorts. The elder Kirks haven’t so much as video-called since she returned to the farm. Once the banks finally gave it back to her, that is. 

“I appreciate this, ladies,” she says, “but it’s only another month until I get my Ph.D, then I can actually start teaching for pay. Jim starts kindergarten next year. We can make it through.”

They share a look between themselves, and _God_ , Winona misses that. Not needing to speak to understand each other. How close they’re standing, Pat’s arm around Lana’s waist, leaning into each other like it’s the most natural thing in the galaxy. The steady reliance. 

Lana catches her staring and Winona quickly shifts her gaze over to her boys. Sam is hogging the vintage pinball machine, of course, with Jim bouncing around him, alternatively trying to watch the game and take Sam’s place. Sam keeps shoving Jim away when he gets too close, but it’s gentle. 

They’re fine. Sure, she fucked up, and sure, it’s gonna eat at her for the rest of her life, but she can do better. Maybe even make them a home-cooked meal, for once. They’re doing fine. All Winona has to do is be fine, too.

It’s not until Winona’s sinking shakily onto the kitchen floor that she realizes just how not-fine she actually is. 

Winona doesn’t cook. Period.

That’s probably the big red flag that her official mom card should be revoked, but that’s just how it is. She doesn’t let her kids starve, obviously—they have cereal and eggs and sandwich stuff, just in case the replicator goes offline—but that warm, heavy, cliche home-cooked food that sits in your stomach and tastes like, what, motherly affection and the High Holidays? This house has never seen any of that. 

... Actually, that’s a lie. 

The kitchen used to be put to work daily, churning out loaf after loaf of fresh bread and pounds of perfectly tender brisket and more matzoh ball soup than any deli would know what to do with. The air would be colored with spices, hanging like a blanket of clouds across the main floor, and the symphony of clanging pots and timers going off and the pop of frying filled the house ‘til it was fit to burst. It used to smell like home.

But then George was gone, and the kitchen grew cold and quiet and empty.

Honestly, it’s Winona’s fault—she’s the one who let George haunt the kitchen. She put his memory into every corner, leaned it against the countertop like he used to stand, one hip cocked to rest on the marble while he stirred a boiling pot; she’s the one who shoved his ghost into the spice cabinet so that now she can’t get at her favorite tea without smelling paprika and feeling the absence of his arms around her waist. She did this to herself.

And maybe she’s a masochist or just completely fucked in the head, but she doesn’t regret it. Every day her sons remind her of her husband—Jim, usually, but sometimes Sam will do something that’s _so like George_ she can’t breathe—and that’s a problem. Winona can’t be knocked breathless every time she sees the ghost of George in her children, and they don’t deserve to be haunted like that. 

So she pulls his ghost out of her boys and quarantines it in the kitchen. And it still hurts, that cold quiet empty, and she still turns the corner and expects him to be there, clanging around, and his absence _still_ freezes the air in her lungs. 

But she can look at Jim and not see her dead husband, unlike nearly everyone else in the quadrant. Doesn’t she get points for that?

 _Apparently not_ , she thinks as she tries to control her breathing from the kitchen floor. Her vision is going white around the edges and she feels like she’s floating above her body. Distantly, she registers a weight next to her, but she can’t process what that means. 

This is stupid. This is _so_ stupid. She was just going to make some soup. She’s overreacting, she knows, she should be able to do this without thinking, but she’d opened the cabinet and seen something out of the corner of her eye and turned because she’d been _so sure_ it was— 

Her breathing’s picked up again without her permission. She fights against the blurriness threatening to take over. 

Six in, hold for seven, eight out. Like her therapist said. Six in, hold seven, eight out. Six, seven, eight. It’s numbers. It’s easy. 

Eventually, she registers Sam curled against her side, his tear-stained face looking up at her. He looks terrified, and Winona’s heart seizes. That look doesn’t belong on the face of a seven-year-old. “Ma?” he asks tentatively, and she pulls him into her.

“I’m sorry, baby,” she whispers into his hair, pressing a hard kiss on the top of his head. “I’m so sorry. Mom’s okay, I promise.”

He pulls back and reaches a slow hand to her face, brushes away tears she hadn’t realized she’d shed. It breaks her heart all over again.

“I’m sorry,” she repeats. “I’m so sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been really unproductive w writing lately, so i'm hoping that posting this next chapter will motivate me to keep working on this.
> 
> thanks to everyone who clicked on this super niche fic! tbh i'm suprised this has more than one hit lmao

**Author's Note:**

> i have been writing this... since 2016. it's still not done. but i want people to see it so i'm posting what i have.
> 
> this is dedicated to all of the terrible representations of winona kirk and all other mother figures in action films: GET FUCKED. i am TIRED. it is MISOGYNY, plain and simple. i will FIX THIS with my bare hands if i have to.


End file.
